Supreme Commander: Evangelion
by Guardian54
Summary: Venting the remaining power of the super weapon that made "The Great Void" and "Debris" through the "Alpha-7 Quarantine" Zone seemed like a good idea back then. It hit another universe's Antarctica. Later, strange people and things began appearing at Roanoke Abyss, and now, two universes of ideologies are about to meet. Vote on profile poll. Only Eva labelled atm for viewership.
1. At The Speed of Plot

A/N: First of all, Elite Commander Dostya is just fine in this timeline. Given you can take as long as you want to actually spring the Seraphim trap on Hades, she'd have more than enough time to have mobs of Monkeylords and Soul Rippers sitting about to take care of anything inbound by then, and have enough strategic missile defences too to counter any practical number of missiles… or bodily intercept them with Soul Rippers if need be.

* * *

Chapter 1: At the Speed of Plot

" _Debris", 3865 AD, SupCom Universe_

"Eighteen years since the end of the Seraphim War, a hundred years since this archipelago was torn to bits, and only now have you figured out that this is where most of the blast that formed the region called 'The Great Void' went?" Dostya looked around with her ACU's sensors once she gated into the research base on one of the islands of "Debris".

Oh how Elite Commander Dostya hated the particular training map based on that locality for its cramped nature… though the extra space around the outside to sneak fleets of sea or air units around was nice and realistic, and now that artificial island frameworks were part of any ACU pilot's arsenal it meant whole floating bases could be constructed easily enough, with the full active camouflage and active stealth suites standard to all Coalition of Species units. Thanks to enough Seraphim rebels showing up in time to help beat back the main Seraphim faction at a crucial turning point of the War, the name had been changed from the Coalition of Humanity, though there was still plenty of paranoia against the Seraphim Separatists.

She continued with "I'm surprised it took this long to analyze the energy signature and such, but… I guess I really shouldn't be shocked given you've also linked it to the Alpha-7 Quarantine Zone and Roanoke Abyss. So, what's so interesting about the Abyss?"

"According to our best Psionics analysts, working with the Princess herself, both locations should lead to another universe, similar to how the Rift was linked to the universe the Seraphim came from. The Abyss is an area where objects can be sent here, while the Quarantine Zone allows sending objects away. Most of the energy of the blast from the Great Void was actually vented through Alpha-7 after they corrected the mistake of sending it, well, here." Avatar of War Rhiza answered. It had been almost too convenient how the Separatists had the means to close the rift. A few hundred Soul Rippers had hovered around the rift continuously pounding every unit that came through it, and the dust was such that they'd had to use drastic terraforming measures to prevent another Ice Age on Earth. However, once the Coalition's counter to the destroyed Quantum Arch was complete, they'd managed to seal it shut without burning out any Psionic users, such as Princess Rhianne Burke, who'd originally volunteered for such a task.

"Great, so, who's going to go over there and explore?" Dostya asked.

Rhiza shook her head "On the contrary, we believe that people from over there… have already come here. Do you remember the 803rd Battle of Roanoke Abyss?" Let it never be said that the Infinite War had not been a ridiculously tedious grind. The numbering system had simply continued counting into the Seraphim War.

Dostya thought for a moment, and consulted the Cybran Network very quickly by uploading a data request and downloading to her personal computer, where it projected a holographic hard-light screen in front of her "The battle over those biomechanical things that randomly showed up in that area, back before the Seraphim War ended? Those things came from another universe?"

"Indeed."

Then a message arrived for both. "I sense a great disturbance!" Princess Rhianne was atypically snappish as she said this "I fear something terrible is happening at Roanoke Abyss!"

* * *

"…I suppose this is why the Abyss is as quarantined as Alpha-7 nowadays?" Dostya groused, as she watched the local garrison commander ordering the manufacture of more automated rescue drones, and sending groups if newly assembled Silver-class (Tier 1) submarines, basically cheap swarming naval superiority units, to dive under the quickly sinking structure that had appeared suddenly over the middle of the unnatural sunken region of ocean that was the Abyss, and had splashed down and began quickly sinking. "To avoid giant building complexes, along with a whole lot of dirt, falling on people?"

Local garrisons were basically not done during the Infinite War due to lack of flexibility and of enough people who had the aptitude and psychology to be effective ACU pilots. It was also impractical because of how good stealth systems were and how cyber-attack could take out sensors too distant from a commander's base, and by the time any units arrived they would face a newly assembled army anyhow. On the other hand, important research stations like this often had some units and a Control Node or two, or an SCU on-site. SCUs were stronger than ACUs that were not refitted, but could not gate through to enemy worlds through the jamming typical in faction-controlled Quantum Gates.

"If these people came from the same universe as those… uh, Evangelions I believe they were called… came from, it could provide a useful reference point on how time passes between the two sides." One of the scientists said excitably too close to the comms… having leaned against the button to switch it on by accident.

Dostya sent a message to Rhiza "Hallelujah?"

"…Is that an Aeon stereotype joke?" Rhiza was touchy about such jokes. Just because the Aeon all believed in the Way did not exclude accepting the basics of other religions.

"No."

"Then yes, Hallelujah. I just hope that the time ratio is not, as some of the scientists' messaging chat says, 'at the speed of plot'." Rhiza said, reading the intercepted scientist chatter while keeping an eye on the strategic map and at the same time constructing her own base.

"Even Cybrans believe in not trolling fate to that degree, Avatar of War. You're doing quite enough by wandering about personally like this."

"Ah, my student will be fine dealing with the paperwork for a while." Rhiza waved her off, wondering just how loudly her student was probably cursing as she sifted through the virtual mountains of forms.

Dostya nodded "…I suddenly feel very sorry for Gustav." Leaving the paperwork to Brackman did get it done, but there was usually an inordinate amount of "oh yes" mixed in as his verbal tic…

Both chattering women, and General Arnold (former defector to the Aeon) once he arrived representing the UEF, felt sorrier for these humans once it was understood that they had been trying to install a Quantum Tech energy source into a cyborg, one with a mind. It had not exactly taken many experiments by the Aeon to understand exactly why such a thing was a Bad Idea. In fact, the Cybrans had learnt it too, such as retrieval of certain Seraphim artefacts from Aeon temples which had gone horribly wrong for one Commander Mach.

* * *

A/N: Please vote on my profile poll about which factions handled which Children for a while during the Seraphim War. I decided to do it then instead of the Infinite War because the kids would HATE each other… not to mention never be trusted to pilot, during the Infinite War. During the Seraphim War things would have been… different, at the very least.

Also please excuse Rhiza's extreme lampshading of the time ratio, and yes, that is NERV US.


	2. Round 803, FIGHT!

A/N: Please vote by review on whether Shinji, Asuka and Rei should be Post-Third Impact (complete with Lilith-Rei merger for another, more world-savvy mind running around in Rei's body) or the result of the shadow Angel managing to catch them all, or some other timeframe. However, please note that regardless of which timeframe, I will still have the events of "Asuka the Psychopath" as prior to the universe-shifting. Oh, and we're stuck with Soryu, because, well, eventually (sequel fic possibility) *REDACTED* *REDACTED* *REDACTED SOME MORE*

The Quantum Rift was closed August 10, 3847, and the Seraphim War ended later that same year. Japan generated 1,061,200 gigawatt-hours in 2014, and in 2013, Japan had 287,000,000 kW of generation capacity, so 287 gigawatts. One ton of TNT equivalent per second is 4.184 gigawatts. So to pierce an Angel's AT field with even a 60 second charge time, and 100% efficiency (and assuming no downsizing due to Second Impact), is only 17220 gigajoules of energy, which is about 4.1 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

…It sounds like I may need to nerf the Heavy Microwave Laser of the Monkeylord from 5 kilotons TNT equivalent per second. That is IIRC the number I used in other works for Seraphim War era Monkeylords (a generation later with some tech sharing between the factions it went to 8 kT/s. The high DPS (4000) is due to structural fields being weaker against continuous weapons than pulse or brief-impact weapons, as compared to the 40 kT energy all directed into the target by a 6000-damage Heavy Oblivion Cannon hit. It might need nerfing to something less amusing? On the other hand Supreme Commander DOES date form the 3800s with over 1200 years of continuous total war by each faction demanding progress to survive… which makes it sound perfectly reasonable if not underpowered.

I use my scaling of trees = about 10-15 meters in SupCom, which means a Mech Marine stands about 10m tall, an ACU about 60m, SCU about 50m, Armoured Assault Bots about 40m, Siege Assault Bots about 30m, Monkeylords 160m to the top, and Galactic Colossi 240m. Also one unit of Mass equals two tons (so most units' overall densities are really quite low). To make each energy unit not obscenely huge (150 Energy = 1 Mass for Tier 2 Mass Fabs, though Tier 3 is somehow less efficient…) I'll cheese universe-boundary physics to make the energy being used only to maintain the borderline state that allows screwing the second law of thermodynamics.

 **IT IS NOT IMPLAUSIBLE THAT THIS MIGHT CROSS INTO MASS EFFECT TERRITORY LATER ON**. Note the character names for example. People who enjoyed the stomp that is post-scarcity technology versus most other fandoms, rejoice! (Though my writing level has, hopefully, improved since then.)

The first half of this chapter is basically some exposition about the factions and their relations.

* * *

Chapter 2: Round 803, FIGHT!

 _March 11, 3847 AD, SupCom Universe_

Hannah Shepard sighed as she held back her squadron member's hair while the blue-haired woman emptied her stomach into the toilet. "Xav, get your ass back in here, it's just Ariel and me in here, and if anyone says anything they can get another cubicle!" She yelled at the bathroom door. Xavier Fran ("Just Fran please, my parents must have thought it sounded funny…") was acting awfully skittish, even for an Aeon man, when it came to taking care of his comrades today.

The door opened and a woman with very dark brown hair poked her head in "I never thought our protégés would be so blunt in asking a man to get into the same public washroom cubicle with them…" Elite Commander Dostya entered the room, followed by Avatar of War Rhiza, who was running a hand through her short teal hair. "This—" Dostya stopped as she detected the scent in the room "Really, Hannah?"

Rhiza was considerably less polite about this, instead electing to turn around, reach out the door, and pull one of her old classmates in by the ear "TEMPLAR, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?"

"Exactly what I was wondering." Ariel Williams said, pulling herself up before ambling over to the sink and rinsing out her mouth a few times.

Templar Fran scoffed at the Avatar of War, something he knew he could get away with because they were off-duty and Rhiza was one of his oldest friends (literally). Both had been denied numerous promotions due to being relatively mellow on the matter of exterminating those who did not believe in the Way, though both were retained in service due to their skill—one did not make it to two hundred years of piloting without prodigious talent—and mental stability. "Avatar of War, you know that Hannah and I have been hanging out in our spare time since the Coalition formed…" He was soft-spoken, but could be forceful if needed, as was the expected archetype for Aeon men.

"I should have kicked your ass back then for being such a predator, Fran. She's two hundred years younger than you!" Ariel glared at him, covering up the initial source of her revulsion. It wouldn't do to have one of the first Coalition cooperative squadrons fall apart because it was revealed that she could only tolerate Cybrans in a professional capacity. But still, to have those nanites swarming over you and doing who knows what to your body, infecting you while you copulated with their host… who knew what might happen to the much older ACU pilot? Ariel had heard stories that Cybran nanite infestation could eat away the brain and turn someone into a glorified meat puppet controlled by whatever orders the computer received.

Fran sighed "Human life expectancy at present is undefined, estimated to be over two thousand. We're both consenting adults, have been together long enough, and are in a high-risk job…"

"Hannah, we don't need any more false rumours flying around about our cybernetic parts. If your relationship goes well anti-Coalition propaganda will howl about how your nanites subverted him, and if it goes badly it'll talk about how inter-factional relationships are doomed to failure. And if any Order technological secrets make it into Cybran hands you'll be accused of stealing from the Aeon Illuminate!" Dostya told her, then grinned "But nothing good happens without taking some chances, so the best of luck to you two."

Rhiza grimaced "I suppose if the Elite Commander is alright with it, it would be undiplomatic of me to be upset. Good luck, Templar."

"Thank you, Avatar of War."

"…Though I do hope you used a condom, Fran." Rhiza teased her old classmate, while wondering whether this relationship was part of why Xavier had refused a promotion after the Seraphim War began, despite being one of the most experienced Aeon commanders still loyal to the Princess and to humanity.

"I have my nanites configured to be contraceptive, Avatar." Hannah explained.

Rhiza nodded acknowledgement, then glanced toward Ariel, saying "Williams, we should leave them to it… though really, you should stay in your quarters instead of being such exhibitionists."

Once they'd left the couple awkwardly standing in the doorway of the women's bathrooms, Dostya's hand landed on Ariel's shoulder "Be honest with me, Williams, were you worried about those rumours of mind-controlling nanites? Was that why you puked? Or was it the idea of an Aeon man being with a Cybran woman?"

Ariel knew there was no use in lying "Elite Commander, I…"

"The Cybran Nation was founded on one concept, only one… Liberty, as long as it didn't hamper another's Liberty. The gestalt intelligence of our nanites cooperates with our minds, and have only one prime directive, to maintain self-determination. That is the hard wiring of all Cybrans, and indeed all Symbionts after exposure to the Symbiont Liberation Matrix." Dostya stated, then grinned "Of course, we could all be under the control of a collective artificial intelligence and I could be lying my ass off to you if you really insist on believing that old Aeon propaganda."

Rhiza sighed "You'd think we'd know better after even Aeon pilots had to receive some enhancements to keep up with Cybrans on the battlefield." She pointed to the exposed patches on her cheek, which flared brighter from their usual dull sheen, and the Psi-powered glow of her irises which also lit up to make her point. Trying to promote inter-factional cooperation was really a pain sometimes, including directing some of her augmentations to the surface…

"Thank you, Avatar of War." Dostya smiled appreciatively before looking back at Ariel "Because of our paranoia about control, we didn't start the Cybran Network until we learnt enough about the Aeon Psionic Network. There are a whole lot of precautions we took, a hell of a lot more than yours… our nanites are only our own, and passed on to our offspring if we so desire, and we can only transmit data, not receive it directly. We need equipment to download anything, and our own senses translate it to us. We should be the one more worried about whether Templar Fran is abusing his Psionic powers to influence young Hannah's mind. Should any capture of Order information on Cybran technology occur, then I should ask for him to be investigated instead… though given his service history and Cybran anti-Psi ability it is exceedingly unlikely."

"Dostya, I think that's enough." Rhiza intervened before the Elite Commander could say something actually seriously offensive.

"You're right, I'm being more vitriolic than I should be, though you should watch me talking to Colonel Arnold, Major Hackett, or General Hall sometime, hah!" Dostya scowled at the mention of the UEF men. She'd been a glorified meat puppet, a system administrator and sex toy under the Loyalty Program, until her liberation from the United Earth Federation a bit over three centuries ago. After being transformed by the Symbiont Liberation Matrix, she'd shown great aptitude for combat, and climbed the ranks steadily. It took her she reached the highest rank of the Cybran Nation, that of Elite Commander, corresponding to Avatar of War and General in the other two human factions.

The UEF had been forced to accept liberation of all Symbionts who had still been enslaved at the time to get enough military assistance from the Aeon Loyalists and Cybran Nation to fight the Seraphim incursion to a standstill. This did not help the average Cybran's opinion toward the UEF, because at least Princess Rhianne and those loyal to her had made serious overtures even before the end of the Infinite War toward a more tolerant approach toward the populace of the other factions. The UEF had to be forced into changing their attitudes, which meant there would be holdouts, oh yes…

* * *

"Do you think it was a bit sudden to introduce Ariel to the realities of a unified humanity like that?" Hannah asked her boyfriend as they returned to their quarters. He was Aeon and likely had a better perspective of how Aeon women might think… not to mention was well over a dozen times her age (which meant little except rumors and nasty looks, given humanity's current state had them both appearing roughly comparable in physical maturity) and so surely had lots more social experience.

"No, I think Ariel will handle it just fine since both the Elite Commander and Avatar of War are there to straighten her and her concerns out, if she has any."

"As we hoped, yes?"

"Please don't get into the same type of verbal tic as your esteemed Doctor Brackman…" They shared a chuckle at that. The "oh yes" verbal tic was famous, after all…

"I'm glad you're off-duty for now, so that we could use shock treatment on Ariel. I hope Hackett's as polite in reaction when he learns that we actually are dating" most of the people who'd heard thought it was some sort of prank or public relations stunt. They found it absurd that two of the more famous commanders from the Aeon Loyalists and Cybran Nation would be seeing one another "though I have little doubt he will be fine." The third member of Hannah's squadron, a man from the UEF, had to give a good example of factional cooperation. If the Aeon woman wasn't rabid over an Aeon man screwing what the Illuminate used to refer to as abominations which demanded extermination (at least, among the more zealous i.e. most Aeon ACU pilots), why should he be disturbed?

Unfortunately for both of them in this particular instance, Hannah got a call with horrid timing from Dostya ordering her to scramble for a mission. Since even seconds' head start in an ACU battle could make a big difference, she was still throwing on some parts of her uniform while she sprinted down the hall toward the ACU storage bays, while listening to the briefing by headset.

"We are detecting a buildup of an unknown energy signature at Roanoke Abyss, you must establish a base and fend off any Seraphim investigation attempts while we investigate. The energy signature is similar in nature to the Seraphim Quantum Rift, so be ready for anything." Dostya's voice said. "The area is within range of our Quantum Gates for Recall purposes, so you will gate immediately."

Hannah boarded her ACU from the catwalk before closing the airlock behind her and settling herself into the command chair as the machine made its way toward the ground-side Quantum Gate they were departing through. Apparently Ariel and Hackett had already gone through ahead of her by the lack of other Armored Command Units approaching this particular Gate. She looked over the landing zone and planned her base layout and build order as the machine was teleported away.

* * *

"I'm glad the Seraphim didn't show up until shortly before us." Hannah ground out as she watched the Seraphim destroyers eat through her spammed Tier 1 submarines steadily. She didn't even have time or resources to tech up most of her Naval Factories yet, since she had no choice but to seek to contest naval superiority immediately. If those Uashavohs were allowed to run loose they'd cut into her base far too quickly, since they'd elected to attack her first instead of Hackett or Ariel, who were on other islands in the strangely even formation surrounding the Abyss. "I'd appreciate some backup thanks!" She barked over the squad channel as she vectored a squadron of Prowlers (Cybran Tier 1 Interceptors) to attack the torpedo bombers inbound toward her submarines, which were losing ground, and to cover her own torpedo bombers attacking the Seraphim units which lacked anti-aircraft cover. That formation had been detected by her Tech 1 "Radar" and she'd judged them as such by their speed… though "Radar" was a gross misnomer for the complexity of the sensors involved.

Roanoke Abyss was a common training map for pilots running simulation battles, but what was left out of that training map was the outer islands of the archipelago, which were considerably less evenly spaced or symmetric than the disturbingly aligned inner ones, which were about as creepy as the area known as "Burial Mounds" in training map parlance. Hannah had barely had time to get groups of Silver-class attack submarines into the water to contest naval superiority and enough Prowlers for air denial. During the naval engagement she'd targeted the enemy cruisers first, to allow use of air units. Seraphim Tier 2 cruisers were ridiculously powerful against massed low-tier aerial units, due to their use of area-of-effect "flak" (a term which had evolved to mean any form of unguided area-effect anti-air fire) instead of human cruisers' missiles.

Then a squadron of Ariel's Exodus-class destroyers came to the rescue, and the enemy destroyers—unlike the human factions, Seraphim destroyers could submerge—were forced to surface. The Harmonic Depth Charges hurled by Aeon Tier 2 destroyers were simply far, FAR too much in damage per second for the Uashavohs to stand up to, and they needed to bring their Ultrachromatic Beam Generators into play to thin out the swarm of Cooper-class UEF Tier 2 Torpedo Boats that had followed quickly on the heels of the destroyers. The Jester Tier 1 light gunships that had been hovering around from the death of the cruisers, gunships which had been keeping the Uashavohs submerged and thus unable to flee, quickly pounced on them.

Eventually the Seraphim advance was beaten back decisively, once, though Hannah had already hit Tier 3 in air units by then and had a Tier 2 navy.

Then a group of Seraphim Tier 3 strategic bombers decided to try to take a shot at her base. Fortunately, due to her masses of Air Superiority Fighters by this point and Tier 2 Cruisers picking them off starting quite a ways off, she only lost a few Air Factories, which were quickly replaced, and a couple spare Tier 3 power generators. They had almost certainly been checking for and attempting disruption of construction of Experimentals, much as her continuous stream of Tier 3 Spy Planes flying through Seraphim airspace on suicide missions was doing. Very well then, they would need to decide this battle without the usual use of Experimental Units or Tier 3 artillery installations…

Dislodging the Seraphim investigators from the other half of the archipelago would not be by any means an easy task then, even with all three factions' units cooperating as they were. A mixture of Restorers, Geminis, and Solaces formed the main aerial patrol around the islands the Coalition squadron controlled. The Aeon Tier 3 AA Gunship, the Restorer, wasn't nearly as good as the UEF or Cybran Tier 3 Heavy Gunships (Broadswords and Wailers respectively) against ground targets, but their structural fields' durability (HP) and anti-air capacity more than made up for it. The Cybran Tier 3 Air Superiority Fighter, the Gemini, was acknowledged as the best of the three factions due to their missile armament and personal stealth. As for the Solace, only the Aeon had a Tier 3 Torpedo Bomber, one which had been engineered shortly into the Seraphim War due to the immense casualties sustained by Tier 2 Torpedo Bombers against Seraphim cruisers' flak batteries.

Broadsword Heavy Gunships were the first contribution by Hackett to the defence after the earlier use of Coopers to help mow down the Seraphim fleet, because they could engage and mow down Seraphim gunships and transports with trivial ease. Then, since he had been under the least attack so far with Hannah taking the brunt of things, he added roving packs of Riptide Tier 2 Hover Tanks to the defence force and built a number of Ravager Tier 3 Heavy Point Defence turrets on Hannah and Ariel's islands, to "encourage" enemy submarines to stay underwater to be shredded by the Solace torpedo bombers.

Due to the continual scouting and precision gunship strikes by the Coalition side, the Seraphim side couldn't build strategic missiles or their Experimental units. However, due to Seraphim strategic bomber strikes and occasional incursions of scouts—though the Seraphim scouts were intercepted really quite far out by Geminis—the Coalition side couldn't get any strategic missile launchers or significant numbers of Experimentals active either. It was boiling down to a massive naval battle with hundreds of frigates and submarines being spammed at each other by both sides. Then a concerted push by a mass of Exodus-class destroyers with Asylum Tier 2 Mobile Shields (these Aeon shield generators hovered), backed by Riptides, Coopers, and Governor-class cruisers, managed to push the Seraphim off another of the major islands in the ring around the Abyss, a large step in pushing back the Seraphim forces in the region… until a group of Seraphim naval units revealed themselves to the rear of the Coalition bases on sensors. Fortunately, Hannah, who had now recovered from the prior economic damage, had recently deployed several Galaxy-class Tier 3 Battleships, which turned around in their move toward the front. After a spy plane ascertained the identity of the targets detected by the vast "radar" radius of their Omni sensors and Tier 3 "sonar" installations, these battleships

Then the Seraphim battleships began firing the extremely heavy and durable strategic missiles they had manufactured and stored internally. Ariel barely escaped after all her anti-missiles were expended due to the high altitude missiles duping her strategic missile defences into emptying their stocks beyond the one anti-missile per strategic missile needed (for all known missile types to date). Only allocation of resource sharing allowed her to rebuild quickly at one of the trio's secondary bases on the smaller islands. Trust among the three factions of the Coalition was not yet enough to gift engineering and other construction units to one another, though they could change control of combat units, which was what allowed them to use combined-force attacks to good effect.

However, the analysts noticed something odd on Omni sensors… "Quantum anomaly amplified, something seems to be coming through, and the anomaly is moving toward the contested island for some reason?" They'd started another major naval push toward one of the smaller islands closer to the sunken pit of the Abyss, to push the Seraphim forces away from it. They'd wiped out the Seraphim outpost there before a large Seraphim fleet showed up and engaged the Coalition battle group. However, the Coalition side was now able to bring out Experimental units, and did so starting with an Atlantis-class submersible carrier showing up and unleashing a torrent of Wasp Air Superiority Fighters, Ambassador Strategic Bombers and Broadsword T3 Gunships as another direct contribution by Hackett to the offensive which Hannah was coordinating now. Hackett handled the defence arrangements, while Ariel was still busy rebuilding.

The low-yield clean nukes the Ambassador dropped only dealt about 3000 rating points of damage to structural integrity fields it hit directly, with steep damage drop-off such that beyond 200 meters radius it was was completely ineffective against targets with structural integrity fields, and could be stopped with trivial ease even by the weakest shield bubble generator available to any faction. Perhaps this was a good illustration of how far human warfare had come, since this type of bomb had about 20 kilotons TNT equivalent yield in its current model. This damage was adequate to sink Seraphim cruisers in one hit, since cruisers were AA warships with much less structural field strength and cost than destroyers, which served as naval superiority combatants, but it could not one-shot anything heavier.

* * *

A/N: I buffed the splash radius because 120 meters would be completely ludicrous in terms of how much sudden overpressure a structural field can casually stand without losing strength. It is considered low-yield even today and I didn't want the 3800s to be as OP as they could be. 20 kilotons is as low as I could plausibly push it while still showcasing how continuous-beam weapons are MUCH better against structural fields than short-duration weapons (5 kT/sec from a Monkeylord is 4000 DPS, while 20kT in a single brief blast is only 3000 damage).

There is some margin of uncertainty in damage numbers, unlike in the game.

* * *

The pilots of the humanoid bio-synthetic walkers that had just emerged from nowhere on the scorched shoreline would have been shocked by these facts and numbers. However they had bigger problems to deal with, like being knocked ass over teakettle into several ruined Seraphim buildings that hadn't been blown apart into chunks by further weapon fire. The Coalition commanders did not know what the machines were, but they did know that they had raised working structural integrity fields. The fields were not exactly very strong on their scans, but did prevent deeper scanning. This frailty meant heavy area-effect weapons were for now off the table and shield generators had to be put over them to protect them from possible stray weapon fire, or specifically intended Seraphim weapon fire, immediately.

The three ACU pilots all had their misgivings, grave misgivings in fact, about protecting the unknowns pending retrieval and evaluation. The reason was obvious when one considered the shoulder pylons of the walkers and their slender lines creating a disturbing resemblance to Seraphim designs. In particular, both Seraphim Armoured Command Units and Ythotha Experimental Assault Bots had prominent shoulder pylons like these things…

Humanoid appearance meant little when almost all sapient life which achieved spacefaring status on their own were going to be humanoid in basic body structure due to the realities of physics. So the appearance of the machines did not do much to soothe the trio's concerns. However, the discovery that they used coding done in an ancient human coding language helped, a lot. Discovering most of the internal references and operating system settings were in the ancient and now relatively little used language of Japanese on the other hand meant getting the relevant translation programs took a while.

Hannah was first to open communications, after dimming her facial circuitry to invisible levels. It was a fashion statement and point of pride in the first place, since Cybrans hadn't actually needed such obvious traits for a very long time, unless they wanted something really sophisticated like Dostya's forehead sensor. However, with the persecution by the United Earth Federation and extermination efforts by the Aeon Illuminate, the Cybran Nation wore their circuits with solidarity and pride during the Infinite War. They would most likely be less than helpful at the present moment though if these people were implant-phobic. These times were some of the many times when Hannah was glad she didn't get any more obvious augmentations. Others were usually in bed, cracking irreverent jokes when Fran kissed her forehead about how if she had Dostya's sensor it would be like kissing her in the eye.

"Please remain calm, we will rescue you from the combat zone as soon as it is safe to do so. You are under our shield bubbles' protection while we fight off the enemy." She transmitted on all frequencies in a basic video format. "Please communicate if you are able and willing."

* * *

 **A/N: Profile poll changed for now to when the kids should hail from, because that's a more immediate problem than which factions they should align with.**

REVIEW!


	3. Three Pilots Meet Three Pilots

**A/N:** Reading "Asuka the Psychopath" is recommended before this chapter, if you haven't already read that.

Only two votes on the poll, one for the Dirac Sea Angel and one for Post-Third Impact… not enough to balance out my personal preference for a thoroughly whacko trio of Children arriving post-Third Impact because Rei basically said "fuck this shit".

By the way, the North Pole in Eva is interpreted by me as being close to the northeast tip of Greenland, which tilts Japan toward the tropics by a good margin but doesn't turn either the US or Germany into arctic climates (given Asuka was from Germany and the US had a NERV installation in the Nevada desert region, Japan CANNOT be equatorial). With ocean circulation being messed up, this means Japan will have very rare snow… until the axis of rotation is altered again by Coalition technology to pre-Second Impact levels as an apology.

And don't lecture me on how the USA isn't that bad. After an event like Second Impact in 2000 there are going to be well more than enough right-wing nutjobs in it to result in, well…

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Chapter 3: Three Pilots Meet Three Pilots

 _Event Unknown, Date Unknown, Location Unknown. (AKA 803rd Battle of Roanoke Abyss, March 11, 3847 AD, SupCom Universe)_

Asuka Langley Soryu was not amused.

Now, this was a fairly common state of affairs, especially since the unfortunate day when she'd discovered she was being a total psychopathic bitch when trying to emulate Japanese culture. Sure, thinking back it was about as dumb as trying to emulate, say, the Americans by acting like their totally unrealistic reality shows, but since Shinji hadn't said anything before Misato brought it up she simple continued.

In hindsight, that comparison should have been enough to send Asuka screaming for the hills. Canada and Mexico had both had to build border walls to keep the crazy contained after Second Impact brought out all the cockroach-like evangelist nuts who just wouldn't die out and stay dead, so US reality shows were _considerably_ saner than the country. Both other North American countries had accepted many tens of millions of refugees fleeing the slavering (and slaving) white ammo-sexual hordes that boiled out of the Southern Strategy, and then put walls and fortifications up. Canada had annexed several major parts of the disintegrating United States to have the land to feed its newly engorged populace now that the Prairies were cooler. They managed to keep that land because much of the American military had defected after escorting the sane refugees against the rabid hordes. Mexico on the other hand managed to take part of California back by secession from the United States.

Second Impact didn't actually kill nearly as many people as some people thought. The Americans Rapture-obsessed mobs going nuts and polluting most of themselves to death, as well as starting a massive nuclear terrorism campaign with stolen warheads, were what did most of the damage. Reports of the border patrol troops and overflight drones observing regular shootouts in the streets, sacrifice of virgins followed by ritual cannibalism, and random orgies of sex and death at the border still showed up in the news every so often. The weapon stations along the border walls were called "Rapture Installations" in slang for good reason. Every time they fired it was to send some group of fanatics, intent on assaulting the walls, off to meet their God.

Such chaos was why NERV had a major branch there, because with enough lunacy floating around no one cared if they took over Area 51 and did something interesting with it.

On a less insane note than the former United States, now known more often as "MURIKA", the effort to correct Shinji from his masochistic streak had failed miserably to date. For example, the first time she's seriously tried it, the boy suffered a stroke from the conflicting logic of being forced to do something he hated being inherently pleasurable to such an extreme masochist. He had only recently been recovered from his coma by Unit-01 forcibly visiting the hospital and shoving him in the entry plug to fix him up.

There were other, even more pathetic, failures, along with Asuka's many other failures in her empty life up to and including being torn apart with her Eva in a macabre display before her body was crushed to paste by the mass-production Evas. And then… this… whatever or wherever this was…

"Do you have any idea what we're looking at?" Shinji asked her, while the three Evas huddled behind destroyed, curvy, seemingly alien architecture. They were all looking out over the sea where there were obvious weapon blasts coming from what seemed to be empty space, some minimal distortions in the air, and what seemed to be beam weapons firing between invisible warships. The surface of the sea didn't seem to even be interrupted by the presence of the ships at all, for some reason, even though from some of the blasts and beams they had to be moving. There were also aircraft suddenly appearing in explosions in the sky and crashing into the sea, or on land, and even crashing into the buildings. It should thus be obvious why they were all taking cover.

It should also be fairly obvious that Shinji was wondering if he'd finally lost it for good after seeing a gigantic Rei and all of humanity being dissolved, including a gory mess which he'd seen start off as Misato blowing herself up with a grenade.

Asuka shook her head, her Eva not moving since she distinctly instructed it not to. They were both plugged into Shinji's Eva, drawing power from his S2 organ which allowed him to operate independently indefinitely. "I don't know, but I have my AT-field as strong as I can make it."

"Same, what about you, Rei?"

"It appears there is considerable combat going on." She stated the extremely obvious, because it explained their current situation of all huddling behind cover from the apparent direction of the battle well enough.

Asuka was first to broach an uncomfortable topic "Didn't you become this gigantic god-like being, Rei?"

Rei hoped to be brief, but she too was mystified. Perhaps it would be better to simply air things out… "The part of me that was Lilith spits upon the Arrogance of Men, and while the Arrogant have been punished in the world we came from, she deemed it an unacceptable mistake. I believe she exploited what she could, so that we who are worthy will have another chance… she is quieter now though, and I do not know why… was the main part of her left behind? Is she part of me now? Am I Lilith? Or are we but copies who think ourselves real? After all, did you not die, Soryu, as I died when I merged with Lilith, or the previous Rei in the battle where I self-destructed Unit-00? Why am I in Unit-00 right now then? Does thinking ourselves real suffice to make us real?"

"Uh, guys, I think we have bigger concerns." Shinji said suddenly as yet another sleek black and red warship, this one larger than any of the previous ones that had sunk and armed with clearly much bigger guns, suddenly materialized as if from thin air only a hundred meters or so offshore. The mighty battleship began to capsize, with a series of thunderous secondary explosions flinging pieces away from it. At the same time an explosion in the air heralded an aircraft crashing toward them, and the three Evas dove out of the way… then had to move back over to where Unit-01 was to plug in again, while observing the wreckage which managed to miss them by quite a bit. "What was that?"

"I register that for once, Soryu has been astonished into silence." Rei stated.

Then Asuka yelped in shock, because a new communication window had suddenly popped up in front of her. A black-haired woman who would be remarkably symmetrical (the usual human criteria for beauty) if not for the bright red lines that traced along her cheeks showed up and said "Please remain calm, we will rescue you from the combat zone as soon as it is safe to do so. You are under our shield bubbles' protection while we fight off the enemy. Please communicate if you are able and willing."

"What… the… hell…" Asuka managed, eventually, toggling transmissions to be sent in the same format—fortunately one compatible with their systems—and frequency they received that message just now in.

"I must concur." Rei noted.

Shinji was last to respond "I was about to say that about Rei's claim to have merged with an Angel and then decided melting all of humanity into LCL was unacceptable, but… Rei, are you distracted by something?"

"I'm just wondering about how to inform you that the voice that claims to be Lilith in my head wants me to, after this event is done, 'become sufficiently one' with you, over and over again… and she's downloading porn from the local psionic network somehow as educational material." Rei said blandly, though she didn't look at them, and blushed as she said this.

"WHAT?" Shinji was not aware his voice could hit such an octave on instances other than the one time Asuka had face-planted into his crotch during one of her efforts to break him off of masochism… and then accidentally planted a fist there when pushing herself upright again. If Rei was actually serious they might have a problem on their hands due to how Asuka had maimed the attachments to his "third leg", so to speak.

"…I should thank Lilith for her lessons on how to joke." Rei noted.

"Is she in your head or something?" Asuka sighed in relief for some reason, because having an Angel merged into one's mind was actually less freaky for Rei than the idea of Rei suddenly becoming interested in human pastimes such as sex. Then she felt the guilt of what she'd done to Shinji's "package" press down on her again. He'd been the only guy she could tolerate and who had been nice to her with no ulterior motives or orders, and she'd… she couldn't even think of it without feeling horrible. Well, she didn't want to date him or anything, but… her rational mind had apparently had enough, since it reminded her _oh for fuck's sake, stop acting tsundere and just acknowledge that you find him the sort who you could put up with for years if not decades, stupid girl!_ Maybe she was crazier than Rei… particularly because it was her study of the phenomenon called "tsundere" from anime and manga that had led her to be a psychopath early on anyhow.

"Partly, yes. She claims she chose to remain separate, but we are for the most part one being. Perhaps this having two streams of consciousness is what it is like to be bipolar?" Rei stated, watching more aircraft being shot down, of four distinct structural styles, and observing their matches to the four styles and main colour schemes of the naval units as well. It seemed that three sides, at least one of which was human or close enough to not make a difference, were ganging up on a fourth.

"Is there an actual local psionic network, and if so how can she possibly tap into it specifically enough to request porn in a war zone?" Shinji was concerned about something else, believing (perhaps correctly) that any female interacting with him in a sexual manner had to be just teasing him for fun. After all, no woman wanted a man who was so defective that he couldn't even have an erection. It felt strangely good, to know that one was such a failure that one could not fail any further, now if only Rei had not brought him along on this new lease on life. Hope hurt, it hurt a lot, but… it hurt so damned good. When reviewing his jumbled thoughts, Shinji came to the conclusion that he was already balls-to-the-walls (well, floor in his case where Asuka had crushed his) nuts, so there was no fear of further madness. How wonderful!

Wait a second… was that… "Rei?"

Rei was occupied with something else. "It appears there are four factions fighting over us. From the colour scheme of the woman who spoke to us, she represents the faction with the red and black units. That faction at least is human. We shall have to wait and see for the others. We should send a reply."

"Did you fix my destroyed testicles?"

"Yes, Shinji, why else would I joke about becoming one?"

"I know you are teenagers, but really, sex jokes on contact with unknown people… whoa you guys are humans… or near-humans?" A transmission of a young, good-looking man with a grey, brown and blue background colour scheme said.

"You were transmitting already, Asuka?" Shinji flushed horribly, feeling very embarrassed.

Asuka was rummaging around her settings trying to figure out why this embarrassment happened "Uh… let's see… the default was to transmit after changing the settings… sorry."

"It is more than understandable enough." Another beautiful woman's face showed up in a transmission, this one with green and white being the dominant colours of her uniform and background. Surprisingly, all of the humans "Major Steven Hackett of the United Earth Federation has several Continental-class Tier 3 air transports waiting for the seas to be cleared, so please do not be alarmed when they pick you up with their cargo transport clamps. Commander Hannah Shepard of the Cybran Nation will send a naval task force and provide air escort with her air superiority fighters and outrider spy planes. I have a squadron of multi-role gunships en route to assist the extraction. I am Crusader Ariel Williams of the Aeon Illuminate. Our three factions represent the Coalition of Humanity, and are battling the invading Seraphim."

"I'm guessing the Angels here are a lot more prolific than back home then if they can muster so many units…" Asuka grumbled.

"Are you capable of speaking either English or Chinese?" Ariel asked, while working on getting more units into the air and rewiring her strategic missile defences to avoid another debacle like last time. This had actually, strangely, been the first battle in which Seraphim battleships had used strategic missiles against Coalition forces.

"English, yes, Chinese, no." Asuka and Rei answered quickly, though only Asuka added "Shinji can't speak either though."

"Well then we'll need a translator for him but not for you two… I don't know what you mean by Angels, but here the Seraphim are not angels in any form, just an alien race we encountered, and who taught the ancestors of the Aeon a lifestyle known as The Way. All Aeon follow The Way to the best of our ability, and practice syncretic tolerance toward the various old human religions. Unfortunately the Earth Empire destroyed the Seraphim as we knew them, which were in fact a colony, and recently the Seraphim have come again, this time not as peaceful would-be friends, but as an invading army. Earth was overrun years ago and we have been fighting to contain them and the Order of the Illuminate, as most of the Aeon sided with their perceived 'gods', ever since." Ariel sent this with translation only for Shinji "You will need to explain the differences in terminology to Shinji after if he doesn't grasp it right away, because honestly, if those machines you are in are anywhere near the top of your world's technology then you are very definitely not being attacked by the Seraphim."

Asuka frowned "I get the feeling I should be insulted."

"Consider it a blessing in disguise. The Seraphim are powerful enemies… and would have been good friends had the Earth Empire not been so xenophobic." Ariel instructed, while queuing up more Restorers and starting work on a Control Node.

The others already had two up and running, since an ACU's networking capacity was limited and they didn't have any SCU pilots available at this time. It had been fortunate the Seraphim had arrived as late as they did, or they'd have probably have needed to work their way around a good chunk of the planet before reaching the Abyss, along with a string of control nodes and to-be-reclaimed bases behind them. That would have been a more secure method of fighting, but they could well have missed this main objective of investigating the anomaly… and now that it had faded away securing whatever came out.

Ariel hoped UEF tractor beams reacted well to the bio-synthetic fusion material the things were made of, or more accurately vice versa. Maybe it would have been a better idea to tell the kids to exit their machines if they could and board a Restorer or an air superiority fighter for the flight back, but a Continental was the method of choice for transporting land units on joint missions with a UEF participant, due to having a built-in shield generator preventing the units from taking damage from area-of-effect weapons until the shield went down.

If they could adapt Aeon shields to similarly have a shielded Tier 3 transport, that would be great, but the UEF had the best mastery over shield technology of the three human factions, despite the Aeon having the strongest Tier 3 shield generator. The Cybrans did their shield generators by stepwise upgrade from a basic Tier 2 platform, so that was a different matter than the Aeon issue of having reverse-engineered much of their tech from Seraphim technology. It wasn't as ground-up an understanding as the UEF or the Cybrans of their respective strengths, namely shields and stealth respectively. Thus the UEF had the Bulwark Shield Boat, which formed a broad, shallow dome which covered submarines as well as surface units from even low-flying gunships, and Continental, with a flattened but still round bubble shield protecting it and its cargo. The Cybrans had mobile stealth generators, lots of varieties of them, lots of units with personal stealth, and the only cloaking technology among the human factions. The Aeon had for the most part better dedicated units, but they weren't nearly as flexible as the other two factions.

The Seraphim, fortunately, seemed to be an exaggerated version of the Aeon in their unit selection, with how stupidly helpless their cruisers were against surface opponents. Even Aeon cruisers weren't nearly so dedicated. On the other hand a combined fleet of Uashavohs and Yathsous (Tier 3 Sub Hunter) were capable of dealing with most targets so the Seraphim also had an interesting amount of multi-role units. However, when the three human factions worked together smoothly, they could more than hold the Seraphim onslaught back. The Order of the Illuminate was what caused most of the major problems, since most of the Aeon had turned to their side instead of follow the teachings of Princess Rhianne.

There was no time to ponder now in battle, even though the three of them were dividing the tasks between them. They needed to win this, and win quickly.

* * *

 **A/N:** You might be wondering why Dostya and Rhiza weren't aware that the Evas were from another universe. It will be explained, but in essence, they'd dealt with "other universe" crap before… and it turned out to be from an outcast colony of back-to-nature enthusiasts who'd managed to engineer their world into a crap-sack totalitarian hellhole by use of biologically engineered giants to terrify the populace into easily monitored and controlled cities (refer to Attack on Titan). Neither had the time or attention to invest in actually checking for these particular guests when overlooking hundreds of battles at once. Since Dr. Brackman dismissed the matter as being a pet project for Hannah and her posse, well they just didn't pay attention to it. You'd be amazed at what even the best generals can miss when they just don't register something as important to their war.

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